What advice or information can you offer to family members or loved ones of people with BPD that may instill some hope?

Q. What advice or information can you offer to family members or loved ones of people with BPD that may instill some hope?

Answer By: Sarah Kathryn Fineberg, M.D., Ph.D.

Instructor, Department of Psychiatry

Yale University

Treatment helps and many people get better over time. I would recommend connecting with a treatment team that can talk with you openly about whether or not BPD is the best explanation for your difficulties, and being in treatment with someone who feels confident talking about and treating BPD. For families, connecting to family support groups and learning about how to support your loved one with BPD has helped lots of people.

For people affected by BPD and their families, both science and psychotherapy are teaching us some things that may not be intuitive, so getting access to experts can be really useful. For just one example, science has taught us that people with BPD interpret a lot of other peoples’ emotions and statements as highly negative and critical. Trained psychotherapists and informed family members who know about this “negative attribution bias” can help the affected person understand that their intentions are actually not so negative. People with BPD can learn to consider and weigh the possibility of negative attribution bias when faced with people who seem very critical or angry.

The Brain & Behavior Research Foundation along with Families for BPD Research, a grassroots group of family members, are supporting efforts to keep learning about the causes of BPD and also about how recovery works. Clinical advocates are working hard to increase access to high-quality treatment. People with BPD and people who care about them are working to increase awareness and decrease stigma. These multi-pronged efforts and the growing collaborations between these various kinds of experts offer immense hope.